Nathan RinneMarch 19, 2014

Short Presentation

It is precisely the emotive traits that are rewarded: the voracious lust for understanding, the enthusiasm for work, the ability to grasp the gist, the empathetic sensitivity to what will attract attention and linger in the mind.

Unable to compete when it comes to calculation, the best workers will come with heart in hand.

--David Brooks, commenting on the book The Second Machine Age

This slideshow is meant to accompany the executive summary located in the appendix on pages 43-49 of the full paper located at :

http://eprints.rclis.org and http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/libtech_conf/

Libraries are looking for the solid footing to weather the storm… strength…(in Big Data?, etc.)

Looking for the solid footing to weather the storm…

“Be like Clive” – able to communicate to all using simple illustrations and examples

In sci-fiction, we see recurring themes of fear and fascination, damnation and salvation combined…. Why?

Geraci, Robert M. 2007. "Robots and the Sacred in Science and Science Fiction: Theological Implications of Artificial Intelligence". Zygon. 42 (4): 961-980.

Automatons – “emblems of the cosmos!”…. symbol of man’s powers to unlock nature’s mysteries!….

Icons of repression and servitude?

Typical Not typical ->

MSTM = Modern Scientific and Technological Mindset = all boundaries and limits succumb before man…

Not necessarily the MSTM ->

Why I think the endgame of the MSTM syncs with Big data and is becoming ever more clear ;

How this mindset is distinct from science and technology per se ; and

How libraries must recover and use good, classical philosophy to shun MSTM while using science and technology with wisdom and discernment.

What if there was a robot that could be programmed to read all of the world’s books and then tell you what it had read?

The robot is Google‟s Ngram Viewer

(not IBM‟s Watson ->)

“Technology is a gift from God.” --Freeman Dyson

Perhaps the greatest of God‟s gifts?

Quoted in Brynjolfsson, Erik. 2014. Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in the Time of Brilliant Technologies. [S.l.]: W W Norton, p. 1.

No, sadly, cat videos do not drive technological innovation. Instead...

Really? Really.

But what does porn have to do with info tech and the MSTM?

(Shoot.)

“…our times demand rejection of seven word bios…. you are creating database entries for yourself [i.e. “putting yourself in standardized forms”] that will put you into somebody’s mechanized categorization system.”

--Jaron LanierThe New York Public Library. 2013. "Jaron Lanier | LIVE from the NYPL." YouTube video, October 10.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFW9qxKojrE.

…[literally] nothing personal - just business…

Character in Don DeLillo’s White Noise, 1985

“You are the sum total of your data. No man escapes that”.

The robot operator operates with the “useful fiction” that you can be known –insofar as necessary for the goals they think best (and how can you doubt that they care?).

Yes… maybe they can‟t really understand you on a deep level, but the maker, through the robot, can see evidence of what you do… It is all “good enough”...

Alan Turing invented the computer based on his own idea of how the brain operated and how human beings communicated. After the computer begin to dominate our lives, it became more and more common to think about the brain – and our own communication as human beings – in terms of the computer itself and computer networks.

Are we, no longer intimidated by computers, simply just getting used to this – this soft mechanical touch? And really – who are our electronic devices – and all our online accounts – primarily there for?

c. 1970

c. 2012

The “business” of education: In the ancient world, there were certainly many traveling teachers who were happy to take your money. And yet, in their business model, they had to pay some attention to you – they had to treat you as a valuable individual.

What is technology for? I should, through careful and thoughtful application (something akin to permaculture), look to serve my neighbor, and to do good for him and to him.

…what we call the common or public good today is not understood to relate to the good, but rather what “works”

…nothing “outside of us” that would command our admiration and devotion…

Is the waterfall sublime? Really?

“We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”

The aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought…(“irrigating deserts”…)

Lewis, C. S. 1996. The Abolition of Man, or, Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools. New York: Simon & Schuster

--Robin Lewis

"Appreciating some artifacts are good in themselves, and not merely because of what they dofor us, is the first step towards a proper appropriation of the liberal arts.“ -- Robin Lewis

…intrinsically good? …intrinsically beautiful?

…intrinsically sublime?

…intrinsically precious? (the baby)

"One of the only definite laws governing the postmodern academic world is that there are no definite laws. Belief in an overarching reality – one that purports to be the same for everyone regardless of perspective or personal stance – is no longer accepted at face value”.

Maxwell, Sacred Stacks, 2007, p. 46.

“…there is probably no way to end the exclusive dominance of interpretation, to abandon hermeneutics… in the humanities without using concepts that potential intellectual opponents may polemically characterize as „substantialist,‟ that is concepts such as „substance‟ itself, „presence,‟ and perhaps even „reality‟ and „Being‟.”

Hans Ulrich Bumbrecht, professor of Romance languages at Stanford University “Production of Presence: What Meaning Cannot Convey”

…what happens when the alternative means taking media guru Clay Shirkey‟sphrase "metadata is worldview; sorting is a political act" – in a context increasingly skeptical about intrinsic goodness, beauty, justice and meaning –and mutating it into a mechanical act that “scales well”?

“under the hood” technology that no one can understand is increasingly displacing instruction on the need to think hard about how real knowledge – and wisdom – might be organized and sought out by taking the time to learn the ins and outs of difficult research…. technology is mysterious, even magical… we simply need to quickly get our “customers” (do they want to be “customers”?) the information that will work for them and their purposes…

Recommendation to not discriminate: relatively Hobbit-friendly library functionality should be continued….

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe believed that classical languages, classical literature, classical arts –and all meaning, ethics, and notions of cultural maturation (Bildung) –would be replaced by modern science and technology, where every tool would be used to maximize the power of human being – or some human beings that is.

“The possession of knowledge which once meant an understanding of the past, is coming to mean an ability to predict the future”.

More bitter MSTM fruit to come?

Technology not only replacing human muscle but the human mind…. Big data being an integral part of this process…. the writing seems very much to be on the wall:

the encroachment will be relentless, as all must bow to the notion that what can be done must be done for progress‟ sake – that is, the “technological imperative”…

“…creativity can be described as the ability to grasp the essence of one thing, and then the essence of some very different thing, and smash them together to create some entirely new thing.” – David Brooks

Brooks, David. "What Machines can't do." New York Times, Feb 04, 2014, Late Edition (East Coast)

William Gibson foresaw this in his 1984 novel Neuromancer, where, as in the 1927 silent picture Metropolis, certain characters experience liberation through technology but they are only able to do so because of the powerful corporate interests operating to the detriment of most persons.

What we call Man‟s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument… For the power of Man to make himself what he pleases means… the power of some men to make other men what they please….[…mere nature to be kneaded and cut into new shapes for the pleasures of the masters who must, by hypothesis, have no motives but their own „natural‟ impulses.]….

Lewis, C. S. 1996. The Abolition of Man....New York: Simon & Schuster, 67, 70, 81

Contra Brynjolfsson and McAfee, of course some men will be racing with the machines and not against them – the only questions are:

• which men this will be, • how they will race with the

machines, and • whether or not as a result

of this process they will continue to act as men should.

This surprisingly alluring “mechanical muse” of “information technology” and Big data need not serve as the microcosm of our “Final Frontier”. Fight!

Star Trek’s Picard to the Borg Queen: “It was not enough for you to assimilate me. I had to give myself to you willingly.”

What we need is a “good seduction” so to speak – one that is lasting and permanent…one found by looking at our own history….

The desire to create automatons is a familiar theme in human history, and during the age of the Enlightenment mechanical automatons became not only an “emblem of the cosmos”, but a symbol of man‟s confidence that he would unlock nature‟s greatest mysteries and fully harness her power. And yet only a century later, automatons had begun to represent human repression and servitude, a theme later picked up by writers of science fiction. Man‟s confidence undeterred, the endgame of the modern scientific and technological mindset, or MSTM, seems to be increasingly coming into view with the rise of “information technology” in general and “Big data” in particular. Along with those who wield them, these can be seen as functioning together as a “mechanical muse” of sorts –surprisingly alluring – and, like a physical automaton can serve as a symbol – a microcosm – of what the MSTM sees (at the very least in practice) as the cosmic machine, our “final frontier”…

…And yet, individuals who unreflectively participate in these things –giving themselves over to them and seeking the powers afforded by the technology apart from technology‟s rightful purposes – in fact yield to the same pragmatism and reductionism those wielding them are captive to. Thus, they ultimately nullify themselves philosophically, politically, and economically – their value increasingly being only the data concerning their persons, and its perceived usefulness. Likewise libraries, the time-honored place of, and symbol for, the intellectual flowering of the individual, will, insofar as they spurn the classical liberal arts (with the idea that things are intrinsically good, and in the case of humans, special as well) in favor of the alluring embrace of MSTM-driven “information technology” and Big data - unwittingly contribute to their irrelevance and demise as they find themselves increasingly less needed, valued, wanted. Likewise for the liberal arts as a whole, and in fact history itself, if the acid of a “science” untethered from what is, in fact, good (intrinsically), continues to gain strength.

I. The Promise and Peril of Automata II. Automata in the Age of Big Data III. What is Technology? IV. ….And Where is “It” Going? V. …And Quo vadis Librarians? VI. Ethical Issues with Information Technology VII. “Why Don‟t You Marry It?”: Seduced by the

Mechanical Muse VIII. I think Therefore You Aren‟t?: Philosophical

issues IX. What Should Libraries Do? (Reflections and

Recommendations for Discussion) X. Concluding Thoughts

Right to questions and discussion

Or…

Right to a vote on which sections of the full paper you would like to hear more on…

Full paper available @

Aiden, Erez, and Jean-Baptiste Michel. 2013. Uncharted: Big Data as a Lens on Human Culture. New York? : Riverhead Publishing.

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Brynjolfsson, Erik. 2014. Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in the Time of Brilliant Technologies. [S.l.]: W W Norton.

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Rock in ocean: http://www.flickr.com/photos/billward/112168013/ ; C.S. Lewis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._S._Lewis ; Droz Automatons: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaquet-Droz_automata ; R2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:R2-D2_Droid.png ; Frankenstein: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster ; Maria from Metropolis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolis_%281927_film%29 ; HAL 2: http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2724/4128130986_a91e5e352f_o.jpghttp://www.flickr.com/photos/x-ray_delta_one/4128130986/ ; Terminator: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hillbillyholiday/Tabloid_Terminator ; Early scientists: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method ; Michel and Aiden presenting: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ritterbin/5913327350/ ; Watson: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IBM_Watson.PNG ; cat: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stillburning/858731994/ ; Turing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computing_hardware ; Jaron Lanier: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaron_Lanier ; Frog in kettle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog ; Baby with iPad: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sonyanews/11785998173/ ; Brain as computer:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_uploading_in_fiction

Turing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing ; MOOCs pic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_open_online_course ; Permaculture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture ; Big data cartoon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_data ; Pascal: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaise_Pascal ; C.S. Lewis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._S._Lewis ; Waterfall: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stuckincustoms/7380767016/ ; father and child: http://www.flickr.com/photos/23985194@N06/5693027860 ; rose: http://www.flickr.com/photos/25084516@N03/4407270321/ ; Clay Shirkey: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_Shirky ; Hobbits : http://www.flickr.com/photos/galaxyfm/583137557/ ; Goethe: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Wolfgang_von_Goethe ; Ford: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ford ; Brooks: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:DavidBrooks.jpg ; Thought balloon: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tux_Paint_thought_balloon.svg ; Question mark: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vraagteken.svg ; Big library: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borg_%28Star_Trek%29; Picard as Borg ; http://www.startrek.com/article/first-contacts-borg-queen-alice-krige

Nathan RinneMarch 19, 2014

Short Presentation